is instant bootup an impossible dream?

rokrok
Posted:
in Future Apple Hardware edited January 2014
seriously. i hit power on my t.v., and aside from powering up the big-ass tube, it's on, ready to roll immediately. can anyone explain to me, with technology getting obscenely smaller and faster with every passing year, why this is STILL just a dream?



p.s. not sure if this would be better under general discussion, but i'll leave it here for now.



[ 01-19-2002: Message edited by: rok ]</p>
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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 46
    paulpaul Posts: 5,278member
    I think the problem is as hardware gets faster, code gets bigger and more complicated (read:slow) so they even out. there would need to be a huge leap in hardware or software efficiancy for instant on...
  • Reply 2 of 46
    applenutapplenut Posts: 5,768member
    never heard of "deep sleep". It does basically that. 1 second and the computer is up. it uses about as much power as it does when turned completely off.
  • Reply 3 of 46
    zozo Posts: 3,117member
    for as much as I hate to admit, WindowsME is a speed demon for startup.



    On my friends Athlon 650Mhz 256MB ram, it takes about 25seconds from hearing 'beep' after pressing the on button to be able to actually use an app (launch).



    On an iMac 500Mhz with 320MB ram it took MacOS X 10.1.2 1:30seconds...



    MacOS still has a way to go in this respect.
  • Reply 4 of 46
    bungebunge Posts: 7,329member
    As long as we're comparing, it takes Win2000 a loooong time to boot. I haven't timed my work computer yet, but to get to the point where I can actually launch an app is over 2 minutes on a 733 P3.
  • Reply 5 of 46
    my friends custom built

    1.4 ghz athlon 512 sdram 120 gig hd geforce3 ti200, with 24x cd-r, SCR drive etc.

    and it takes literally 3-5 minutes to boot, its ridiculus, his cd-rw drive is awesome, his creative soundblaster audigy is awesome, but apart from that his computer is horrid
  • Reply 5 of 46
    But who shuts down?



    OS X is not Windows 95... it's not going to crash on its own just sitting there.



    There is *rarely* a reason to even restart, let alone shut down.



    The only time my iMac at home turns off is when there's a Thunderstorm coming and we wanna unplug from the wall.





    OS X also allows us to keep *programs running* the whole time.



    Hint: never quit your Carbon/Cocoa Apps. There is almost no penalty for keeping them open, and even the ones that do draw resources, ram is *cheap* .



    Keeping the programs up means never waiting for the App to launch.



    ======================



    Having said that: no instant boot up is not impossible.



    As we get holographic and even bio-mechanical or strait carbon-based (read: grow-a-mac)computer systems, and get away from moving parts and slow clock-based subsystems we'll see instand boot up... just like your eyes when you open them.



    [ 01-19-2002: Message edited by: BerberCarpet ]</p>
  • Reply 7 of 46
    Yep, it's called sleep. I actually never put my computer to sleep, only the monitor, and it's even faster.



    The "my TV powers on instantly" argument is pretty fallacious -- your monitor powers on instantly, too. Neither of these do terribly interesting things that require lots of memory.



    Alex
  • Reply 8 of 46
    rokrok Posts: 3,519member
    [quote]Originally posted by Alexander:

    <strong>The "my TV powers on instantly" argument is pretty fallacious...

    </strong><hr></blockquote>



    that just sounds so wrong...
  • Reply 9 of 46
    [quote]Originally posted by Alexander:

    <strong>The "my TV powers on instantly" argument... ...Neither of these do terribly interesting things that require lots of memory.</strong><hr></blockquote>



    Which is why the "Grow-A-Mac" is so interesting.



    Think about how *complex* our brains are.



    (All this assumes your brain works as expected, ie; no schitzophrenia and such)



    You wake up and are pretty much, ready to go instantly.



    Sure, you may take a few minutes to get up to speed: but that's stimuli based.



    When you wake up on your first day at Disney and are going to go to Epcot for the first time, you're not "sleepy head" your wide awake earlier than you really should be--you've got a long day and need sleep.



    Brains Need Sleep--Will Bio Computers?



    Will we need to kick-start our bio computers with Cafienne? Or will we simply design a cafienne-pump into them?



    Will our bio computers experience the same sort of shortcomings that our own brans experience? I mean, if Motorola cannot get high yields on Chip fab, how can we expect someone to grow the perfect brain every single time?



    What do we do with the ones that aren't up to spec?



    Kill them?
  • Reply 10 of 46
    [quote]Originally posted by ZO:

    <strong>for as much as I hate to admit, WindowsME is a speed demon for startup.



    On my friends Athlon 650Mhz 256MB ram, it takes about 25seconds from hearing 'beep' after pressing the on button to be able to actually use an app (launch).



    On an iMac 500Mhz with 320MB ram it took MacOS X 10.1.2 1:30seconds...



    MacOS still has a way to go in this respect.</strong><hr></blockquote>



    WindowsME cuts severe corners by loading the non-boot essential stuff after the desktop is brought up. Didn't you ever notice how the first 30 seconds after you see the desktop are slow and painful? That's other stuff Windows is loading in the background.
  • Reply 11 of 46
    buonrottobuonrotto Posts: 6,368member
    Doesn't OS X (oh yeah, this is is software. ah well!) load stuff linearly on bootup? Isn't it possible to boot stuff/check stuff several at a time with this OS? This is how sleep (not deep sleep mind you) works in OS X.
  • Reply 12 of 46
    outsideroutsider Posts: 6,008member
    There's a memory technology called MRAM by IBM that will be seeing the light of day in about 2-3 years. It's a magnetic type RAM that hold the information with no supplied power. Take the speed of SRAM (not slower SDRAM) and the versatility of hard drives and you have MRAM.
  • Reply 13 of 46
    Wouldnt it be possible to use a battery in a computer to save the state of the ram? When the computer is on it could recharge the battery... It would need to be a fast-charging, long-life battery, but I dont think that this kind of thechnology is too far away.
  • Reply 14 of 46
    If I'm not mistaken, if you can replace the harddrive with something similar to flash memory, a lot of the starting procedures for an os will be gone. For an example, look at Palm or Newton.
  • Reply 15 of 46
    spartspart Posts: 2,060member
    [quote]Originally posted by BerberCarpet:

    <strong>



    Which is why the "Grow-A-Mac" is so interesting.



    Think about how *complex* our brains are.



    (All this assumes your brain works as expected, ie; no schitzophrenia and such)



    You wake up and are pretty much, ready to go instantly.



    Sure, you may take a few minutes to get up to speed: but that's stimuli based.



    When you wake up on your first day at Disney and are going to go to Epcot for the first time, you're not "sleepy head" your wide awake earlier than you really should be--you've got a long day and need sleep.



    Brains Need Sleep--Will Bio Computers?



    Will we need to kick-start our bio computers with Cafienne? Or will we simply design a cafienne-pump into them?



    Will our bio computers experience the same sort of shortcomings that our own brans experience? I mean, if Motorola cannot get high yields on Chip fab, how can we expect someone to grow the perfect brain every single time?



    What do we do with the ones that aren't up to spec?



    Kill them?</strong><hr></blockquote>



    LMFAO!!! :eek:



    Let's just hope the majority of our Grow-a-Macs are insomniacs.
  • Reply 16 of 46
    I just notice the morbid euthinasia-bent that my previous post seemed to imply, and I wish to iterate that I really don't condone the killing of less-than-steller-performing brains, or the bodies that house them.
  • Reply 17 of 46
    BeOS used to boot up in 8 seconds (timed it several times).
  • Reply 18 of 46
    majukimajuki Posts: 114member
    Most of OS X's bootup time (the same goes for Windows 2000) is authenticating with the network. It will send pings out to the network to determine what's there, update ntp, etc, etc. I've also found out that OS X throws a fit when you put in IP addresses for DNS that it can't reach. The clock resets and accessing panes in system preferences slows way down. Upon reconnecting with the network and letting DNS resolve, everything speeds back up.
  • Reply 19 of 46
    applenutapplenut Posts: 5,768member
    [quote]Originally posted by David R:

    <strong>BeOS used to boot up in 8 seconds (timed it several times).</strong><hr></blockquote>



    still does. if the mac firmware didn't take so long to start loading the OS and I didn't have to go through the os chooser on start up it could be even faster
  • Reply 20 of 46
    mspmsp Posts: 40member
    [quote]Originally posted by David R:

    <strong>BeOS used to boot up in 8 seconds (timed it several times).</strong><hr></blockquote>



    I think BeOS just took a snapshot of the memory contants and dumped them to disk. Really, not a bad idea at all. Afterall, why do we need to reinitialize all of those inits, etc., at startup? Why not load the last image of the system back into memory?



    It reminds me of the old Snapshot ][ card I had for my Apple ][+. It allowed you to copy games by dumping an image to disk.



    Come the think of it, FWB had an extension for a while that met us halfway there. IIRC it loaded all of the extensions into memory before running them, reducing startup times by a nice amount.
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